Good evening, everyone. Welcome. I want to talk this evening about living a meaningful life. How do we live in a meaningful way? And this is a kind of preliminary talk to what I want to talk about in two weeks, which is Labor Day, the teaching of right livelihood, which I think is among the early Buddhist teachings may be the most important for our society, for our time. So I'll say a little bit about that towards the end. But I want to start just with a question that my teacher's teacher, Shinri Suzuki Roshi, who founded San Francisco Zen Center, a question that he used to like to ask, which is, what's the most important thing What's the most important thing?

[01:06]

What is it that you really want? So, another time, Suzuki Roshi said, the most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing. So this is a real question. You might think, well, of course, we just chanted the metta sutta, may all beings be happy. We want everyone to be happy. We want all beings to be happy. Sure. And we will close with the bodhisattva, four bodhisattva vows, as we do most of our events. Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. the Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I've got to realize it. Well, you might think, oh, that's what I should feel as the most important thing.

[02:15]

And of course, we are here to encourage the Bodhisattva way, to encourage everyone else, to encourage everyone to help all beings be happy, free all living beings, and so forth. But really, what's the most important thing to you? To you, today, this week, this month? This question has a lot of texture. So our practice is a lot about questioning. This is at the heart of meaning, of finding meaning in our life. What's important? And it could be all kinds of things. Getting a good night's sleep, having a good time, whatever that means.

[03:20]

We may have many things that are important to us. So to look at, what am I really up to? What is it I really would like? And, you know, we might feel, oh, I really want all beings to be happy. But then what are the ways in which that finds its shape for you? What's the most important thing for you? So I would say that that question is not about finding some answer. Although, of course, we may have many answers. And I want to have time tonight, after I say a little bit, to talk about, to have discussion. And if anyone wants to say what's important to them, they can. What's the most important thing? Part of that is just to question it. So one entry into Zen practice for Westerners was important to me in my mid-teens when I had a lot of what you might call existential questioning.

[04:37]

What's the point of all this? I really felt this deep need to have some kind of, how do I live in some meaningful way? It was somehow an important question to me. So existentialism is one entryway to true practice in the West. I read existential writers then, people like Dostoevsky, who Don and I like. But this was a real question, and it's an entryway for Westerners to look at, oh, okay, what are we doing here? What's the meaning of this life? What's missing from existentialism, what I found in Zen, is that we have this practice, this physical, tactile, yogic practice of questioning. There's actually something that we do in Zen practice.

[05:38]

It's not just some theoretical, abstract questioning. We sit, upright, present, this body and mind here tonight. What's important to us tonight? So the most important thing they change for you, you know, over the years or from day to day. Or there may be, you know, you may have, what's your top five important questions? And they might shift too. But part of finding meaning in life is being willing to be the question, to look at that question, to take that question on. Again, not just, as some kind of abstract intellectual question, but this body, this practice, sitting upright here tonight, it's difficult, you know, to sit upright and not move, to feel the discomfort in your knees or your shoulders or your back or your heart, to feel the confusion about

[06:51]

Who am I really? What's the point of this? Where's the meaning? So in the style of Sikhi Roshi in San Francisco Zen Center where I was trained, talk a lot about non-gaining attitude, not to try and get something else from your sitting, not to try and get something else from your practice. So this is not a practice to reach some higher state of mind or higher state of being or altered state. This is a practice about actually fully being yourself. This body, this mind, this question, to be willing to be a walking question sometimes. Sometimes, there may be times when you don't have a question. It's okay. People come in to see me and say, I don't really have any questions. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that there has to be some burning question, but still, can you be paying attention to what's important?

[08:00]

What am I up to? So when we talk about not gaining anything, that means that there's not some limited goal of our practice. As I was saying yesterday, a few of you were here, if we feel, some people may feel compassion fatigue, they feel tired of being kind or friendly or whatever, I mentioned my friend Joan Halifax saying that that's really a misnomer. That means that your compassion is not really universal. It is limited. So we don't sit for some limited purpose. What's the most important thing? Maybe there's several most important things. to say, to talk about non-gaining attitude and not to get caught in some limited outcome or limited goal does not mean that there's not some purpose or meaning to our practice and to our life.

[09:07]

So, in Buddhism we talk about relieving suffering or universal liberation or awakening to Buddha nature or various ways to talk about this. So the question came up yesterday, what is joy? So I encourage you all to enjoy your breath, enjoy your posture, enjoy your question, to bring joy to your question. How do we find real satisfaction? What does it mean to be joyful? Not as some kind of wist out distraction or something, to really feel this deep sense of intention and meaning and purpose, this satisfaction that's possible when you're willing to face this question. when you're willing to ask the question, when you're willing to sit in the middle of question, when you're willing to sit in the middle of question without hoping for some limited answer, without looking to find some answer that you can put up on the wall and bow down to.

[10:21]

That's called, in religious studies, fundamentalism. You have some answer to everything, and you can rely on that and quote that and bow down to it and think you don't have to, you can stop questioning, stop living. No, this is a, the meaning, well, I don't want to say what the meaning is, but we find meaning by being willing to be right here in the middle of this posture of questioning. What is it to be joyful? How do we find the deep inner dignity of being willing to just be upright and present and pay attention and look at our life and look at our confusion and our problems and our greed and all of that stuff, look at the difficulties of the world and all its corruption and what do I do about all that?

[11:23]

Well, what's the most important thing? What's the most important thing for you, for you? This year. In New Year's people make resolutions, I want to work on this this year sometimes. You can do that any day, you don't have to wait till New Year's to do that. What is it that's important to me? And again, it's not about some idea of it. It's not some idea of what's important. It's not some idea of what I want to accomplish. It's to actually live the question. So we have this, again, this physical practice for doing that. for sitting in the middle of our question. So how do we find what to do with our life? One hint is, again that I mentioned yesterday, is Thich Nhat Hanh's suggestion that while you're sitting zazen, that you smile, just a little bit.

[12:29]

I find it actually helpful. Give me a small, subtle thought, subtle smile like a lot of Buddhists have, like the Mona Lisa has or whatever. This is a yogic practice where we embody and enact questioning, where we embody and enact Buddha nature. And this means this deep joy that's not about, oh, everything is smiley face and everything in the world is wonderful, but okay, I can be here asking my questions. What's the most important thing? So there are many levels to what is the most important thing. So the writer Joseph Campbell talked about following your bliss. How do I find my way of living a meaningful life? Well, it may change over time, but part of that is, you know, you may actually feel, may all beings be happy, but then what's your way of expressing that, enacting that?

[13:37]

What's your way of finding meaning and questioning in your own life? So again, there may be many levels. What is it you're interested in? What is it you're good at? What is it that you like to do? How do you find a way to take that on? Part of this is the question itself, that you're willing to not be stuck in some answer. That you're willing to try out new things. So sometimes our life is kind of on a plateau and things are working and that's great. You can enjoy that and bring joy and bring vitality to that and even bring questioning to that.

[14:39]

But sometimes, oh no, things change. Circumstances may force us to change or we may decide to make a change. We change our jobs or start a new relationship, or end a relationship, or move to a new city, or, you know, things happen. In the midst of all of that business of actually living, what's important to you? What is it that makes you happy? Or, I don't know, again, what is happiness? It's like the question, what is joyfulness? How is it that you find your way? Again, what What you are interested in may change. That's okay. You may find a new interest. You may find some new ability that you didn't know you had. You may try something new and you're really good at it and you like it. Oh, great. Your own interests and abilities may be your way of expressing, realizing, making real the most important thing.

[15:50]

And we need to do that because, again, it's not just about each of us. This is a practice, this is a bodhisattva practice, a practice of recognizing that we're not alone, that we are connected very deeply with all beings. And how do we, to be helpful to the world is also to be helpful to ourselves. Compassion is for ourselves and for others and realizing dimensions of that. So getting back to a little bit to right livelihood. Again, I'll talk about this more in a couple of weeks on Labor Day, but in early Buddhism, this was part of the Eightfold Path, the fourth noble truth. The first truth being that there is suffering, the second that there's a cause of that, based on our grasping and desires. The third is There's an end to that. And the fourth noble truth is eight ways in which to practice to help create that.

[16:57]

One of these is right livelihood. So there are many different systems of describing practices. A lot of them have different numbers in Buddhism. But anyway, the right livelihood is a challenge for us, of course. Our economy sucks. It's difficult to find a job now. And there are people in our Sangha who are unemployed or underemployed, many of us. It's not easy. How do I find my way to live, to make a living, to give life to my life? Well, in early Buddhism, there were guidelines about this. One of them is not harming. In early discussions of right livelihood, things like making weapons, or using weapons, or being a butcher. Anyway, these were guidelines to right livelihood.

[18:01]

In terms of modern ideas of this, again, not harming is important. What is the result of our work? Is it helpful? Is it constructive? Does it build something? Or create something? Can I use my creative expression in it? Or does it cause harm to others? So another index of right livelihood in a modern context is just can you see the results of your work? So working on an assembly line in a factory might be right livelihood. Do we know what's going to come out the other end at the end of that assembly line? Well, if it's a guitar, electric guitar, great. If it's a missile, well, maybe that's not such right likelihood. Here's a couple of examples. What's the result of our work? We don't always know exactly, but we have some idea.

[19:06]

And then in the work that you do, Is it a kind of work that allows you to maintain some kind of awareness? Or is the pressure or the pace of the work or some other aspect of the work such that it kind of dulls you and you don't know really where you are? You get through the day and you get a paycheck at the end of the week or a month or whatever. Were you even there while it was happening? So this isn't about having some, you know, it's not about necessarily having some creator, even, or glamorous livelihood, but, you know, the stories that I've heard of bus drivers who were clearly bodhisattvas, who helped, in some ways, all the people who got on their bus to feel more alive and more cheerful when they got to the end of their ride.

[20:10]

There are many ways to think about right livelihood. This symposium I went to the week before last about Western socially engaged Buddhism, there were a lot of interesting people there, talking about a lot of interesting things. One of them relevant to this little problematical, thought-provoking. A guy named Jon Kabat-Zinn, some of you may have heard of. He's been instrumental in bringing meditation into mainstream medical activities. So he's had extensive Buddhist training himself, Korean and maybe Tibetan. But he doesn't like to talk about Buddhism and he doesn't like to hang out with Buddhists, although he was there. knows many of the people there. He's worked in, so they're now in hospitals all over the country, all over the world.

[21:15]

There's a recognition that they've actually demonstrated scientifically that meditation and mindfulness exercises promote healing. And this is recognized by the by the mainstream Western medical establishment, and he's one of the key people who's created this. He described his own process. He was a biochemistry, I'm not sure, some scientific major at MIT, and he decided he didn't want to do that. So he gave a definition of a job and described his own process or path, he said, a job for him, he decided, was something I would love to do so much that I'd pay to do it. A kind of extreme version of following your bliss. Of course, maybe this also reflects a certain level of privilege or something, and we know the economy now is very difficult and many people struggle just to be able to feed themselves and their children and so forth.

[22:24]

Anyway, can you find something you love to do that you can turn into a way of living? So I'll talk more about this again on Labor Day, but going back to where is the meaning? What is the meaning of our being here? What is the meaning of our practice? What is the meaning of enjoying what you enjoy? What is the most important thing? This is a kind of subversive question in a lot of ways in our society where there are so many very highly developed, skillful, technological distractions to take us away from asking such a question. It's possible to be entertained so much that we don't think about, well, what's important to me?

[23:31]

So that's maybe enough for me to say. We have some time. And I welcome your questions or comments or responses. Or if anyone wants to say what's important to you tonight, you can do that. So please feel free. Questions, comments, responses. Yes, Tom. You were mentioning about fundamentalism. Is Soto Buddhism fundamentalism? I think you said that. By fundamentalist, I mean something that holds on to some system of belief or some object of belief without questioning it. OK. And Soto's, at least my way of Soto Zen Buddhism is about questioning. OK. I suppose there could be fundamentalists in Buddhism, too, who stick to a very traditional idea of what practice is.

[24:35]

But the point is that real spiritual tradition and practice is alive and willing to meet. Well, what's important here now, today, 2010? Yes, Laurel first. So I'm at the age where I and many of my friends talk about retiring and what we're going to do once we've retired from our main job. And so one of my friends who teaches high school at St. Ignatius, it's a Jesuit school for smart kids, teaches math and physics, and he said, oh, that's easy. I volunteer to teach math and physics at St. Ignatius. He loves his job so much. But I always thought, if I retire, when I retire, I would like to get rid of just some parts of my job.

[25:45]

And the sort of ratings and reports are the job that has You don't get to really do the fun part of the job most of the time. So I thought, well, I would get rid of fun phrasing. And then I come to a Zen center. Within a year and a half, I'm in charge of fundraising. I ask myself, what do I really like? I mean, I must like it if I'm doing it, right? Thank you so much. I think it was not that important part of my job, but I seem to, I don't know what it is. I don't think it's as obvious. I think we sort of think we know. I go by what you do, not by what you teach. Good. Yeah, and there's what we like, what our interests are. There's also what we're good at.

[26:46]

And there's some satisfaction in doing something well that's helpful, even if there are parts of it that are prickly or difficult or tiresome. Maybe all jobs have some parts like that. Yes? I'm Bryant, and this is my first time here. I've been practicing, though, for years at Zen Buddhist Temple Chicago in Evanston. I think a good familiarity with the practice. And one of the benefits I personally get out of it that has relevance to your question tonight is all my life I've, this is a kind of a call-in, you know, what should I be doing? It's almost like this constant gong going off, you know, this job I currently have, this isn't my ideal work I need to be finding. And yet while I've definitely paid attention to that and tried to steer myself in that general direction, I discovered through the practice of how much I was not enjoying where I was.

[27:58]

Even if it might not have been the most ideal job, through this practice I have really learned how to better appreciate here and now, wherever I am, and not thinking I'm so darn miserable, I need to be over there, but I'm here. So I've learned how to appreciate here and now a lot better. Good, thank you. That's an important piece of this. It's not what's the most important thing for me to do somewhere else. It's in this situation that's important. How can I enjoy it? How can I bring joy even to the difficulties and challenges of this situation? And sometimes it's pretty difficult. But paying attention and asking the question gives a kind of life to it. Thank you. Serena, hi. How are you doing there?

[29:01]

I've been definitely challenged with that question, what's the most important thing? that is not here. So I feel like with a lot of practice, I've gotten really tolerant to all sorts of situations that don't work. So I'm getting good at that, but I've been getting clarity to some degree. And while I squirm and I'm really uncomfortable Being able to come here, I have a really hard time making decisions about some things. I realized that the most important thing is being available to receive the help that is available to me, which is, I feel like there's a lot of help.

[30:06]

And then also to be able to be available to other people and to kind of be a good example because of the help that I've received. So although I'm constantly confused and have a difficult time, I feel like I'm getting a lot of help. And eventually, I hope I can make better decisions. But in the meantime, I think that that's That's been really great to be able to experience just that abundance of help. Thank you. Yes, to appreciate this situation. Not to passively accept it, but to look at it. So this question is about Prajnap about insight.

[31:07]

How do we look into what's going on? And then, you know, we may not be able, you know, it's not about fixing it according to some idea or ideal. It's about, oh, what's interesting here? What's important here? How can I bring something to this? How can I enjoy this? How can I, you know? And it's not that we have some ideal outcome either. It's, we're actually alive. So it's, we don't know exactly. what we should be doing, should, or how to bring this life alive. But again, you know, thinking back to the existentialists who asked the questions really well, we have a physical practice for expressing that question, for breathing into that question, or all those questions. for considering some possibility of some other possibility appearing to us.

[32:14]

Jeremy. I'm not lucky enough to have a friend come to me and ask me what the most important thing is when you're going to buy. The example I try to remind myself of is that But it's important to know what happiness really is. At the same time, I think our culture defines happiness as this gigantic, you know, blissful state that we're supposed to be in all the time. It's a gigantic blissful state that we should be in all the time if you're not happy and there's something wrong with you. So then I try to say, you know, that that in itself is, you know, an illusion. So I try to point out that the most important thing to me is to see that happiness is delusion and insert pretty much new things, so it's to kind of step out of the illusion of stepping out. Yeah, our idea of happiness is not happiness. Our idea of

[33:21]

Ideas of what we should be doing are not the reality of how this life is this week or this month. I'm not sure I got all of what you were saying there. Well, you know, I guess what I think I've been getting is that You know, if everything is okay in its current state, if everything is kind of just as it is in its own perfection, then by stepping out of what you think, you're stepping out of the direction already there. I'm not sure, though. You know, it's not that everything is fine just as it is and it's all wonderful. Yes, it is, and You know, Suzuki Roshi also said, the world is perfect just as it is, so you have a lot of work to do.

[34:25]

Yeah. Yes. Thank you. We're losing our balance constantly against a background of perfect balance. So it's not about passively accepting this as it is. It's seeing the wholeness of this. And then, you know, we have a responsibility to do the Buddha's work, to bring Buddha to this situation. Hi. Talk about what's important. Finding out what's important to me. Throughout the years, I just forgot your name. Brian. I'm Scott. Hi, Scott. I always wanted more. And when I did start to sit and finally look at life and what it is, I realized everything's here.

[35:29]

And then, you know, once you're aware of it, not everything, but once you start being aware of what's going on and everything's made up that's coming out of my head, I've been in my mind my whole life. That's how society raises you to be. And that's a big thing to go through. And then to go out and start living in that world You run into, you know, I'll sit and I'll meditate for a couple of hours and then I'll be in a peace of mind and the next day I get to work and I fall out of that track of being connected with the whole that you were talking about, with other human beings where, I mean, I want to love everybody else, but it makes it very hard to destroy that state of mind and, you know, and then if I don't sit for a few days, I start falling in that mind and I start getting out of track. And then when I sit, I can put on that smile that you were talking about. I'm like, it's okay. Now I notice what's going on.

[36:31]

But time and time again, I find that to find happiness, I have to be unhappy. I have to go through all this pain and all this suffering and all this bad stuff. to sit down and get that smile back, okay, I'm back where I was at. That's the first noble truth. There's a lot of stuff to do. And it's a struggle. And you know what? I'm going to struggle. I'm willing to do it. And that's what I want out of life. I want to get going with that. I want to deal with it. Oh, thank you. You're willing to do that. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. So yeah, our job is just to inspire each other to keep on in the midst of a world of confusion and suffering and craziness and, you know, I've said this a couple times to people recently, that our world, our society, is so crazy and corrupt and filled with anger and hatred and so forth, for someone to be sane in this society would be really crazy.

[37:51]

How do we find our way of bringing our life to it, the way you described it, Scott? Yeah, and part of that, part of being alive is not some idea of accepting things, but seeing that there's suffering, sustaining the gaze of looking at our own pain and frustration and grasping and so forth, and the world around us, and yet being alive in it. And it's right there that we say, what's really important? in my situation now, what can I do? And it changes. See, it's not a question that you ask once and you get some answer, and that's that. It's a question that we live with, as you described it. Can someone admit to something that, maybe not the most important thing, but something that's important to you, that's, you know, not huge and glamorous and spiritual, just something that's important to you.

[39:24]

So I think we have to include that level, too. Anybody want to admit to something? Jerry. Keeping my family relevant. OK. Every day. OK. That's a good one. That's a big one. Anybody have any silly things that are important to you? Wondering how ancient dragon is going to take care of chipmunks. Yeah, we don't have our chant book forms down very well, yeah. That's okay, it's, but yeah, that's a good question. Maybe it's a silly question, but it's a good one. So, Hoggetts is a priest, and that part of her job, therefore, is to think about these forms of practice that we've inherited, and to take care of them, to try and take care of them beautifully and well. So that's part of what we do here. And the point of all these forums is just to have a context in which to ask these questions.

[40:31]

So yeah, how do we take care of our space? How do we take care of all of the spaces that we inhabit? Nathan. One thing that I've been thinking about that's important to me is kind of being a good person. Like, you know, I'm a moral person. Not doing bad things. Yeah. And I find that... One thing that I've been thinking about is, you know, your teacher Greg Anderson, and he wrote this book called Being Upright. It's kind of about being upright. And one of the things that he says in that book is, a bodhisattva vows to accept all blame, and all responsibility without any pointing fingers. So that means you really can't, well, part of being upright is taking on responsibility for the bad things that happen.

[41:44]

Last week, one thing that kind of brought that home to me was that kind of the trivial examples of my mom which I grew up with, and I kind of felt like she called me and said, you know, if Craig can't sleep, and I was like, what do you think about that? And, you know, I could have said, no, that's not the right thing to do. But anyway, I said, well, I trust your judgment. That's OK. So I was kind of implicated in the death of this guy. So I was like, well, you know, I wanted to be a good person. was I that killed this cat? Well, the great master Namsan once said to have killed a cat, too. So you're in good company. Yeah, so it's very sweet to want to be good.

[42:46]

But don't let... What is it? President Obama sometimes says, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good anyway. We have ideas of what it is to be good. I think for you to ask that question, how am I implicated in the death of this cat, that's a good question. Lots of deaths, so we have to kind of face that. Yeah, you went kayaking on the Kalamazoo River and then the next week there was this spew of oil that killed all these birds, yeah. Well, I don't know that your kayaking had anything to do with that, but, you know. Still, we all are connected.

[43:48]

We all are connected. I keep feeling this point more and more, I mentioned it yesterday, that we have some idea of good, we have some idea of enlightenment, and that really gets in the way. We have some idea of something we want to get. We have some idea of how we should be or who we should be, and the point is to actually be alive and asking the questions. As a great American yogi said, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. Brian. I would just add to his comment. This is an important topic, and I think I've read in the literature of various places, you know, if water were pure, fish couldn't live, that there's a certain amount of impurity that's even necessary to life, the muddiness of life. And the way I see it, are headed in the right direction and I think there's so many other people in this world that are deluded completely and aren't even aware of it and doing so much harm that as we've sort of we're not at the perfect stage but we're trying to do good we're trying to be aware of what we're doing and the fact that you're

[45:20]

Asking those questions about the cat and all that, I think, puts us light years ahead of people that are just completely in the dark about these things and never ask questions about themselves and their behavior.

[45:37]

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